


Psychological Evaluations

by PrairieDawn



Series: Welcome to 1951 [7]
Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Capital Punishment, Dubious Psychiatry, F/M, Food Issues, Frank is an ass, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Tarsus IV mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2020-12-17 06:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21050099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: Sidney arrives at the 4077th just as all hell breaks loose in the mess tent.  Potter enlists his aid in getting everyone back on track, as courts-martial are a distraction that nobody needs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You knew Sidney was going to turn up eventually.

Of all the times for Sidney to show up, this had to be the best and worst all wrapped into one. Sherman Potter surveyed the wreckage, mostly human, in the mess tent, Sidney grown still and watchful beside him, his arms crossed over his chest with practiced nonchalance. Charles was still spouting his latest demand that he be returned to Tokyo post-haste when Radar stumbled backward against the mess table, hands still gripping white knuckled to the stretcher on which Kirk lay. “Because in two weeks there isn’t going to be a Tokyo,” he said to Charles, his voice breathless but loud enough to be heard over Burns’ incoherent shouting. Radar looked straight at Sidney then, going impossibly whiter. “Or a New York.”

The words fell into a gap as Frank paused to take a breath. Heads turned toward Potter’s clerk, who ducked his head, shifted his grip on the stretcher, and mumbled, “Let’s get the captain back to the VIP tent,” before disappearing backward out of the mess, followed by Spock, McCoy, and Houlihan. Frank, mercifully, fell silent.

Sidney threw him a look that clearly said they would be having words later—and he could raise an eyebrow as expressively as Spock could, come to think of it--before they both turned their attention to the three surgeons remaining in the mess tent. BJ was restraining Hawkeye from behind, his arms wrapped tight around the other surgeon so his arms were pinned to his sides. Frank looked from the group departing with the stretcher, to Charles, to Hawkeye and BJ, and opened his mouth to continue his rant, but his voice emerged as a quavering whine. “Colonel, he hit me. Pierce hit me.”

It’s about damn time, Potter wanted to say, but he held his tongue, glad Radar had gone off to the VIP tent with Kirk. “Stand down, all three of you.” He turned first to Hunnicutt. “Hunnicutt, take Dr. Pierce back to the Swamp and keep an eye on him. Don’t leave him alone. I’ll come by later to speak with you both.”

He waited until the pair left the mess tent before turning to Major Burns. “And as for you, Major Burns, this outfit has endured your petty, self-serving, at times dangerous behavior for far longer than I ought to have let it go on. You are officially relieved of duty pending court-martial. If I could I’d pack you up and send you off to,” he almost said Tokyo, but changed his mind at the last minute, not wanting to imply he wanted the man dead, “off to Seoul to be quit of you. But given that no one goes in or out but patients, we’re stuck with you here.”

And where was Potter going to put him in the meantime? Frank was a flight risk with neither the ability nor the inclination to keep his mouth shut. For the moment, though, he was stunned to silence, gaping at Potter like a fish on a riverbank.

Sidney turned to him. “No one goes in or out?”

Potter frowned. “Like I told you. You shouldn’t have snuck in here. Now you’re stuck with us at least for the next two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” Sidney’s face betrayed his dismay only briefly before the professional mask went back up. “So, what do you suggest we do with him for the next two weeks?”

“Just what I was going to ask you.” He regarded Burns again for a long moment. “Nothing for it. We’ll put you up in the supply shed under guard until we can set up a stockade.”

“Sir, this is unfair. Pierce should be court-martialed too. He hit me.”

“You really want to spend the next two weeks sharing quarters with him? Under guard?” Frank’s aghast expression would have been comical if the situation weren’t so serious. “I’ll get statements from everyone who witnessed the altercation and if a court-martial is warranted for Captain Pierce, he’ll have one too. Now let’s go, soldier.”

“This is egregiously unfair,” Burns grumbled, but he walked between Sidney and Potter to the supply tent and didn’t try to make a break for it. 

The supply shed was more comfortable than the name would suggest. There were a couple of chairs arranged around a small table and a couple of spare cots resting vertically against a wall, which saw frequent use that Potter chose to overlook. They would need sheets. He tipped a couple of likely crates until he found a set and tossed them at Burns. “I’ll have Klinger collect some of your things and bring them here when he goes on guard duty. Sidney, can you keep an eye on him for a bit?”

Sidney leaned against the wall beside the door. “We’ll be fine.”

Potter wasn’t so sure of that. He took half a step out the door and looked around the yard until he saw private Wharvey. He alerted the young man with a wolf whistle and waited for him to jog over. “Colonel?”

“Keep an eye on these two. Burns isn’t to leave and Sidney—just keep him in one piece.”

“Will do, sir.”

That was at least a little better. Frank Burns might be a lousy surgeon, a coward, and a bully, but he had at least forty pounds on Sidney Freedman and he was just crazy enough to make a break for it in the middle of the day. Though where he would go was a mystery.

He tapped the doorframe with his palm. “And Sidney, whatever he tells you,”

“I’ll take it with a whole shaker of salt,” Sidney interrupted.

Potter shook his head. “Whatever crazy story he tells you is probably about eighty percent true.” He left the psychiatrist to his unenviable task and hurried off in search of Klinger, not wanting to leave Sidney too long.

*

Frank Burns strode after Colonel Potter, his arms raised, fingers curled as though to wrap his hands around a throat, but even before he reached the door, even before he caught sight of Freedman’s infuriatingly placid face, he threw up his hands in disgust, then let his arms fall to slap, boneless, against his sides. He clattered into a folding chair. Freedman stood with his arms crossed, watching him, his skinny body propped against the door frame like he had until the end of time to wait for Frank to open his mouth and incriminate himself.

That was not going to happen. No sirree! Frank Burns was smarter than that. Even though the entire camp was against him. Even though they’d all take Hawkeye and that time traveling commie traitor’s side. He could bide his time until the brass showed up. Flagg would know what was up. Maybe General Smith would listen to reason and he’d be out of this hole and on to a real command, and Hawkeye would be rotting away in some cell. Maybe even, and a tiny part of him relished the possibility, swinging from the end of a rope.

It was wartime after all.

And all Freedman did was stand there with that almost smile on his smug face. He had to be dying of curiosity. What had Potter told him already? Frank could give him quite the earful if he had a mind to. And maybe that wasn’t the worst idea he’d had all day. Maybe, if Freedman could be persuaded to listen, he could talk some sense into these people, stop them listening to commies with fantastic stories and a creepy little fake who ought to be the one heading for a Section 8. “What are you looking at?” he snapped. “I don’t need a psychiatrist. It’s the rest of them that are nuts.”

Freedman blinked, tortoise slow. “You feel like talking about it?”

Frank sneered back, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get me to talk about my feelings, maybe have a good cry, then you could tell yourself you did something. Well, I’ll tell you, we’re in the middle of an alien invasion and a good cry isn’t going to do anybody any good!”

“An alien invasion. So.” Freedman gestured about the room. “I haven’t seen any aliens lately.”

“Yeah, you did. He was wearing a hat so you didn’t see the ears.”

Freedman shook his head. “This might just be more serious than I thought.” He moved away from the wall, collected a chair and strolled over to where Frank sat. For a moment he just looked at Frank. Tired. The psychiatrist looked tired. Well, Frank was tired, too. Freedman flipped the folding chair open one handed, spun it around and sat down, one leg crossed over the other, arms holding on to his knee. “Somehow I never saw you as the type to try for a Section 8.”

“I’m not the one who’s crazy around here,” Frank insisted. “There are aliens in the camp, well one alien anyway, and communist time travelers, and they’re building this thing in the shed to bring their friends here.” He leaned forward to launch himself from his chair.

Freedman held out a belaying hand. Frank settled back into the chair. He was angry enough to get up and pace, but he needed Freedman to see that he was the rational one here. “You’re saying that there’s an alien hiding somewhere in the camp.”

“Hardly hiding. Green blood, pointy ears, creepy stare. I just know he’s up to no good. He’s corrupted Corporal O’Reilly, got him helping build his transmitter thing, listening to messages from space that Potter sends right on to General Smith like this isn’t all some kind of joke. And they took Margaret!”

“Margaret’s missing?”

Frank spat. “No, she’s right here. And I have to watch her talking with him. Getting coffee with him. What’s he got that I don’t?”

“Who, the alien?”

Frank wished the psychiatrist was a bit less obtuse. “No, the commie surgeon from the future. McCoy. Stole her right out from under my nose, the sneak.”

Freedman just sat there, infuriatingly unperturbed. “He stole your girlfriend.”

“She was the only good thing I had in this place. Everybody hates me, they’re all jealous of me. Play tricks on me all the time, insult me, treat me like dirt. And now I don’t even have Margaret.”

“So there’s a new surgeon on base and Major Houlihan prefers his company to yours.”

“They can’t wait to rub my face in it every time they see me, too.” Frank started out of his chair again, this time only settling when Private Wharvey stepped toward them with his hand on his rifle stock.

Freedman nodded. “It sounds like a lot’s been going on since I was here last. Must be frustrating, being on lockdown like this. I know I shouldn’t have borrowed a jeep to come for an unofficial visit, but I couldn’t help myself.”

Frank found himself smiling unkindly at the psychiatrist. “And now you’re stuck here with the rest of us for the duration. Serves you right.”

The door to the supply shed opened. Klinger and Potter appeared, Klinger holding a small crate of what looked like Frank’s things scavenged from his spot in the Swamp. The thought of that pansy ass corporal pawing through his belongings made Frank sick. That Klinger should be assigned to guard him, as though Frank were the crazy one was too much to take. He shouldn’t even be in this position. Pierce should be grateful that Frank defended him. It was more than he deserved. “Pierce should be here instead of me. I did nothing wrong. He struck a superior officer.”

“So did you,” Potter said.

“So Kirk says,” Frank shouted. “We have no proof of that. Those men could be fugitives for all we know! They could be bringing an invasion to us instead of trying to stop it. All you have is their word.”

“That’s enough, Major,” Potter said. “Sidney, let’s go back to my office. I’ll fill you in on what’s been going on, give Burns some time to cool off.”

“That’s all right, you two. Go on and leave me. With him,” Klinger complained, flinging an arm out in his direction as though he were a theater prop instead of an officer.

“Just keep him here,” Potter said, closing the door on the two of them.

*

Sidney fell into step beside Potter. “You know, you should have sent him home after the incident with the tank.”

They had all been incredibly lucky that day. Unbelievably lucky, given that no one had been hurt, Frank’s joyride demolishing more than one occupied tent. Potter shook his head. “I still don’t know why Hawkeye and BJ vouched for him that day.”

Sidney clucked his tongue. “Aliens. Invasions. You know, I thought last week, when the stars changed, that I’d be busier than I have been. Most people have too much to worry about here on earth to concern themselves with the sky. I wonder if something in Frank’s past—”

Potter silenced him with a gesture. “Don’t waste your time trying to come up with explanations, Sidney. The one I’ve got for you is a doozy.” He opened the door to the outer office, where Radar sat next to the improvised subspace radio, headphones on, one hand poised over the reel to reel. They picked their way around the extra equipment littering the room. The clerk waved a distracted hello without looking up.

Once Potter had shut the door to his office, he pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured them each a shot. “You’ll need it,” he told the psychiatrist. He perched on the corner of his desk, one leg swinging a little. The whiskey burned his throat on the way down. Sidney folded himself into his chair, still wearing that bemused, listening expression that encouraged without pressing for information.

Potter regarded the bottom of his glass, then deliberately looked Sidney in the eye. “I’m not going to sugar coat this. For a little over a week, the 4077th has been harboring three naval officers from the 23rd century, one of whom does happen to be an alien. Half alien,” he corrected himself. “From what I’ve seen of them, all good men, though I’ve gotten to know the flight surgeon better than the other two.”

Sidney blinked at him and waited, otherwise unmoving, as if he were awaiting the punchline of a joke.

“I’m not kidding, Sid. I’ll take you over to the VIP tent to meet them as soon as I give them a little time to make sure Kirk is stable. He’s getting over a bad chest wound—Frank hit him in the worst possible spot.”

Sidney stretched his lips into a non smile. “If it were anybody else telling me this, I’d be writing a recommendation for a Section 8 right now or looking for con artists. You’re sure?”

“Had the alien laid out bleeding green all over my operating room. He ended up on the wrong side of a land mine. Quite a fine welcome to Earth that had to be.” He poured himself a second glass of Jack, stared at the reflections on its amber surface, and decided to set it on the desk rather than taking another drink. “The real trouble is, turns out we’re smack in the middle of unfriendly territory and looking at a war that will make Korea look like a coupla kids fighting in a sandbox.”

Sidney took a moment to think over what he’d been told, or so it seemed. He turned his own empty glass in his hand for a minute before leaning forward to set it on the desk. “Sounds like a stressful situation for all concerned.” He stood up to pace the room. “Maybe it’s for the best that I came when I did.”

Potter suspected that Sidney was, perhaps, taking refuge in his role as a psychiatrist. The surgeons had been doing the same, with no shortage of wounded to keep them occupied, as had Spock in his way, throwing himself into a complex project that probably would do them no good. “I can’t let you leave.”

“I gathered as much. So, Frank threw a punch at a patient, Hawkeye threw a punch at him, and you guys are hiding an alien. I still have one more question. What did Radar mean when he said there wouldn’t be a Toyko or a New York in two weeks?”

Potter almost reached behind himself for that second shot of whiskey. “Have to ask him to be sure. Nothing good.” He frowned at the floor. “Under the circumstances, both Hawkeye and Frank may have committed capital offenses. I do not want this situation to go to court-martial. Hawkeye doesn’t need his name dragged through the mud and he’s too good a surgeon to let him sit idle in the stockade. Frank, for all his faults, doesn’t deserve to die for them,” provided Kirk survives, Potter thought, “and if there is an after to all this nonsense, we don’t need that kind of thing cluttering up the story when this all goes public.”

Sidney pressed his lips together and nodded. “I think I’d like to meet your guests before I talk to Hawkeye. Just to get the story straight.”

“They’re in the VIP tent most likely. We’ve got a sick room set up in there for Kirk, so that’s where he’ll be unless, heaven forbid, Frank hurt him bad enough for him to need more surgery. I’ll walk you over.” Potter followed him to the outer office. Radar looked up from his work briefly but turned away before speaking. He followed Sidney out, taking care to close the door quietly rather than letting it whack into the doorframe.

He led the way to the VIP tent, noting Sidney’s gaze resting briefly on the recently erected tent where the transmitter was being built. His eyebrows questioned, but he refrained from speaking, instead hooking his thumbs into his belt loops and seeming almost to stroll beside Potter. He wondered how much of his nonchalance was an act, and how much was the effect of having seen everything it was possible to see already. “You look like going to meet alien time travelers is just another Wednesday.”

“Maybe I think you’ve all finally cracked.”

“In that case, I’d expect you to be a little more concerned. I was thinking maybe this is old hat to you. You met aliens before in your line of work?”

Sidney smiled blandly. “What makes you think I’d say so if I had?”


	2. In which Sidney meets a real live alien and Hawkeye needs a drink.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sidney debriefs Kirk and Hawkeye on the fight that occurred in the mess.

Sidney had not, in fact, met an alien, so far as he knew, despite his joking implication. He had met men and at least one woman who had claimed to be aliens, but all had well documented histories and credible diagnoses to explain their delusions. He took a last look at the sky, the misaligned stars that evidenced the impossible neatly hidden by daylight and lowering clouds, and knocked on the frame of the screen door.

Potter spoke before Sidney had a chance. “Boys, I’d like you all to meet someone. May I come in?”

There was a shuffling from inside the room, hurried whispers and the sound of furniture being adjusted. “Come in,” a voice said from inside.

Potter held the door for him and followed him into the small space. One man lay in one of two cots set up in the room. Another, a tall fellow wearing what Sidney was sure was one of Radar’s beanies, sat at a card table on which several steno pads were strewn. The third stood when he and Potter entered. He waited for Potter to introduce him. “This is Sidney Freedman. He’s a psychiatrist, stationed in Seoul. He’ll be here for the next couple of weeks, so it would be a good idea for you all to get properly acquainted.”

“Leonard McCoy, MD. That’s Jim Kirk on the bed, and,” the was a moment of hesitation as Dr. McCoy met Potter’s eyes and was answered with a slight nod. “That’s Spock. I don’t see that we’re in need of a psychiatrist, but anything you can do for Frank or Hawkeye would be greatly appreciated.”

“Or Radar. I believe he would benefit from discussing his circumstances with someone more removed from his chain of command,” the one in the beanie said.

“He still burning the candle at both ends?” McCoy asked.

“Very much so. I have been unable to convince him to avail himself of opportunities for rest and recreation. He seems to believe that he must imitate my schedule, despite being human.” Even Sidney could hear the implied “merely” in Spock’s statement.

Sidney pulled up a chair across from Spock. “I’m here until the communications lockdown is lifted. A couple of weeks, I hear. In the mean time, the first thing I’ve got to do is advise the Colonel if we can avoid a court martial for Burns and Hawkeye. Were either of you present at the start of the altercation?”

“I was,” the one in the bed, Kirk, said.

“Are you up to making a statement?”

“I am. It was all my fault anyway.”

Sidney turned his chair to face Kirk. “How’s that, do you think?”

“I haven’t been myself since I woke up.”

“Ischemic brain trauma, still resolving,” McCoy supplied. 

“Right,” Sidney acknowledged, then turned back to Kirk. “Go on.”

“It was the first time I’d gotten to go anywhere but from one bed to another. I was in the mess tent and I—got upset with Dr. Pierce. He was going on about the quality of food and he took a sandwich from Dr. Hunnicutt and I took a swing at him.”

“You tried to hit Dr. Pierce because he took a sandwich from Dr. Hunnicutt,” Sidney asked. 

“I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Kirk said. Sidney pointedly ignored the throat clearing from the doctor behind him. He needed to hear from Kirk first.

“That’s fine, I just need to know what happened for now.”

“Frank got in between us and I could see him going for my jaw, so I ducked to the side, but I’m not as agile as I think I am, right now, and he tried to pull the punch at the last second, I think, and I ended up getting hit in the chest.”

“He’s got a couple of cracks opened back up in his ribcage. I don’t think it’s too serious,” McCoy noted.

“It is very serious, Doctor. Major Burns could have killed the captain.”

“But he didn’t.”

“Do I need to ask the two of you to leave?” Sidney said.

The two fell silent. Kirk continued. “I got the wind knocked out of me. I didn’t see anything that happened afterward.” 

“That’s fine.” He sat back in the chair, partly to signal that the formal part of his inquiry was at an end. “So, I hear you’re Navy men.”

“More or less,” McCoy allowed. “Spock, take off the damn hat.”

Spock, notably, looked to the captain in the bed before doffing his cap to reveal pointed ears. That would be an easy thing to fake, Sidney noted, but his coloring was quite noticeably green, now that he let himself pay attention to it. “I’m glad to meet you properly,” Sidney told him. “Has it been difficult, adjusting to a culture that, I presume, differs so much from your own?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I have been living among humans for most of my adult life. They may change in technological understanding and education in a few hundred years, but they are, in essence, the same sort of beings in any time period.”

“My condolences,” Sidney muttered. In the press to get the story straight about the fight, he almost missed something critical. “You said Radar’s having trouble?”

“He has been assigned to assist me with the construction of a complicated piece of radio equipment on a tight schedule. In addition, he continues his duties in the hospital and monitoring the radio, though Corporal Klinger does what he can in addition to his own duties.”

“He’s running himself into the ground and he won’t listen to anybody about it. Not Potter, not Klinger, not even Mulcahy,” McCoy added.

Sidney sighed and slapped his thighs before standing. Of course Radar was running himself ragged. The whole place had to be in an absolute uproar—and he’d always had a tendency to try too hard. Like he was making up for something. “As soon as I’ve had a chance get to the bottom of this court martial situation I’ll make some time to talk to him.”

“We’d be grateful.”

“Colonel, I believe it’s time for me to look in on Dr. Pierce and Dr. Hunnicutt. Gentlemen.” He took his leave of the three, not wanting to take up more of their time so soon after Kirk was injured. The man likely needed his rest.

Potter led him out of the VIP tent. He considered Spock’s mannerisms. He had a flattened affect that suggested recent trauma in most people, though perhaps he was just reserved by nature. The doctor seemed normal enough, though he would have to ask Kirk about his response to witnessing food being taken from someone. He had his suspicions. The Great Depression had left the better part of a generation of men and women with strong feelings about food. “I sure you can help me figure out an answer to this mess. I sure as hell don’t want to try to convene a court martial for a capital offense.”

“You should have sent Frank Burns anywhere else a long time ago,” Sidney said, not in the mood to pull punches today.

“Don’t I know it.” They arrived at the door to the Swamp. “I’ll leave you to it. Meet me back at the office when you’re finished with them and we’ll figure out what we can do.”

“This could take a while,” Sidney warned.

“Do me a favor. Come out while it’s still today.” Potter stuck a toothpick in his mouth to chew the end, turned on his heel, and strode back to his office, his steps as always parade drill precise in length, even when weariness slowed their cadence.

Unto the breach, as it were.

*

Hawkeye had graduated from curled in a ball on the bed to wearing a trench into the floor of the swamp with his pacing. BJ had allowed him one drink, then had drained off the still and taken the carafe to points unknown. Hadn’t poured it out, he hoped. BJ told him Kirk had issues with wasting food, and with eating certain foods—hell, the whole conversation had reminded him of a whole lot of things from a couple of decades ago that he’d rather not have thought about himself. He’d known and he’d done it anyway.

He plucked laundry off the floor and the furniture, balled it up, threw it on the bed. Picked it up off the bed, threw it on the floor again. Kicked it into a corner. The entire mess was his fault. If he hadn’t thrown that damn tantrum over egg salad none of this would have happened.

His knuckles ached where they’d connected with Frank’s jaw. Oh, but that had felt good, getting one, two, almost three hits before BJ had caught him and stopped him. Wiped that venal, petulant sneer off of Frank’s face, if only for a minute. A minute for which he might have written his ticket. He laced crabbed fingers through his hair, gripped, and pulled hard, drawing a scream out of himself. And again.

The screen door slammed back open. BJ had been gone half a minute, maybe a little more. He caught at Hawkeye’s upper arm and Hawkeye shrugged him off, needing to move, to pace, to outrun what he’d done and what might come of it. On his next circuit he walked, head bowed, straight into BJ’s chest and stalled there. He thumped his head against BJ, twice and the bigger man let him do it, though it had to hurt. Hands came up, rubbed at his arms briskly, but didn’t grip, as if BJ knew that confining him again was the last thing he needed. He turned his head so his cheek and ear pressed into BJ’s shirt, hard enough to hear his heart beating in his chest.

A keening sound, barely human, crawled up out of his throat. 

BJ walked him backwards, half supporting his weight. His calves struck the cot behind him and his knees let go, dropping him onto the mattress. BJ sat down beside him, not talking, just holding him, pressing a quick, hard kiss to the top of his head and pulling him snug up against him. Hawkeye rubbed the reddening bruises on his knuckles. “It doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die anyway, you, me, Daniel and Pe…” he shook his head violently to shut himself up. “Potter will have to do it, you know. They be able to have a proper court martial, not here, not now. Potter will have to shoot us both like dogs.”

“No. He won’t. You were defending a patient and I’ll swear to that.”

“And Frank?”

“Right now, Frank isn’t your problem.”

“Frank is everybody’s problem.”

There was a knock at the door. “May I come in?” Sidney said.

Hawkeye couldn’t make his mouth form words. BJ raised his chin off the top of Hawkeye’s head. “Might as well come in, Sidney,” he said.

The door squealed as it opened, slower than it had to, and Sidney stepped inside, not as he had in the past, as though he had near as much right to be there as anyone who lived there full time, but softly, almost hesitantly. He stood beside the chair nearest the cot, hands folded before him. From this angle Hawkeye couldn’t see his face. Didn’t much care to anyway. He stood for the better part of a minute before saying, still with that quiet voice devoid of its usual humor, “May I sit down?”

BJ’s hand lifted from his back, presumably gesturing the psychiatrist to take a seat. Sidney spun the chair and straddled it, folded his hands on the back, and rested his chin on them. “It’s been a rough week,” he said.

Hawkeye shrugged his agreement.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

Hawkeye rested his forehead in his hand, then dragged that hand down his face, over his mouth as if he could keep himself from speaking by covering it up. He shrugged again. “I fucked up is what. I lost a kid on the table and I took it out on the guys in the mess.”

“I’m afraid I need a report, not a mea culpa.”

Hawkeye nodded, but kept his eyes on the floor for the retelling. “I went to the mess tent and they were serving egg salad with cole slaw.” He swallowed hard against memory. “The egg salad smelled off, the cole slaw was soggy and I swear it was getting moldy—”

“It wasn’t moldy, Hawk,” BJ said, the gentle voiced traitor.

“Anyway, who serves two mayonnaise salads at the same time? So I picked up my tray, and I took BJ’s sandwich out of his hands—I admit, I was putting on a show. I didn’t realize Kirk would fly off the handle like that.” He shook his head. “I should have, but I didn’t.”

“So the patient became upset because you took BJ’s sandwich?”

“I told him it was okay, I wasn’t hungry,” BJ said.

“Do either of you know why he had such a strong reaction to seeing food taken from someone?”

Hawkeye shook his head. BJ said, “I don’t, but Bones does.”

“Guess I’ll have to ask him then." Sidney fell silent. The folding chair creaked as he shifted his weight backward. 

He wasn’t talking, and he wasn’t leaving. Hawkeye fidgeted on the cot, staring at the hairs on BJ’s forearm and wishing he’d put his arm back around Hawkeye’s back so he wouldn’t feel quite so much like leaping up to pace. A beetle made its meandering way across the dirty floorboards. 

“What happened next?”

Hawkeye watched the beetle. “Kirk took a swing at me. I stepped out of the way and Frank either hit or pushed him, I don’t know, but he went down.”

“And that’s when you hit Major Burns.”

“I saw Winchester had Kirk well in hand. I couldn’t let Frank get away with one more thing.” He rubbed a thumb over the bruises on his hand. “I was protecting a patient. Frank was out of control.” He heard himself say it and even he didn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. If he kept his eyes on his own hands, wringing and twisting in the space between his knees, he wouldn’t have to look at Sidney, or worse, BJ. He felt as though he had to move or he would shatter from the tension in his arms and legs. One knee escaped his control and bounced, jostling his clasped hands.

Words left his mouth without his being aware of willing them. “If it means Frank never puts another wounded boy at risk I’ll hang for it.” Sidney shifted in his chair, though Hawkeye didn’t look up to see the tenor of his response. BJ stiffened beside him. Hawkeye raised his head. “Gladly.”

“I don’t expect it will come to that, Hawkeye,” Sidney said. “I’ve got to go talk to Colonel Potter, but I’ll be back and when I am I want the poker and booze I came here for, you got that?”

“I’m always happy to take your money,” BJ told him. 

Sidney stood, tipped an imaginary cap at the two of them, and made as though to leave, but at the last moment he turned back to fix Hawkeye with his gaze. He held it for a moment, opened his mouth as though to speak, and then, as though changing his mind, he shook his head and left Hawkeye with BJ in the Swamp.


	3. In which Potter determines Frank's fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Potter decides what to do about Frank and Hawkeye's violations of the code of conduct.

Potter was not a stickler for military discipline in the behavior of his surgeons. An excess of rigidity in the way he treated his men, especially brilliant draftees who had not chosen the military life, would be counterproductive in the only real sense that mattered, getting as many of the wounded boys who arrived at the 4077th home alive.

This situation was different not only in degree but in kind. The 4077th was no longer merely a mobile army hospital, but the site of what might be the most important espionage work on the planet, and understandably sequestered because of it. They had already been in the middle of a war; now, they were sitting on the cusp of a civilization ending conflagration. It wasn’t quite the heat of battle, but Potter could certainly feel that heat approaching from where he sat.

He could not afford to have his people falling apart. 

There was a knock at his office door. “Come in,” he said.

Sidney let himself in. “Radar’s asleep at his desk. You want me to wake him?”

“No, let him sleep. He needs it. I think he gets fewer nightmares during the day.”

Sidney regarded the door to the outer office thoughtfully. After a moment, he turned away, plucked a rag doll off Potter’s desk, and dropped into a seat, regarding the tiny doll instead of looking at Potter. “Quite a pickle you’re in, here.”

“How’s Kirk?”

“Not too bad. His doctor thinks he’ll recover. He blames himself for the altercation, though McCoy and the Commander, Spock, aren’t so ready to forgive and forget. You think they’ll want to see Major Burns hang?”

Potter chewed the end of his pencil. Terrible habit. He fumbled in his desk for his cigar box. “I doubt it. Bones considers the whole concept of capital punishment barbaric, and Spock claims to be a pacifist. In a military outfit, go figure.”

“If the captain wants to press charges, the most we can do is delay.” 

Potter lit a pair of cigars and passed one to Sidney. “What about Frank in the meantime? You think he can be put back to work?”

Sidney shook his head. “You have any work for him that isn’t likely to get someone killed?”

“Not that he’ll do willingly. Can you get him a Section 8? That might be our easiest out if we can get him stateside. He’ll talk, of course, but he’s been doing that to any and all who will listen since our friends got here.”

“At least here you control his access to the radio and the mail.”

“More or less. But I don’t have the staff to spare for a 24-hour guard. Or a babysitter.”

Sidney met his eyes. “Are you seriously considering…”

“No.” He shuddered because briefly, he had. “No, I’d lose my credibility with the rest of the men. And likely with the visitors from a more genteel future that we’re putting up. No, I do have to make it look like I will, though. You think you can back me up, not spill the beans?”

“Colonel, the number of unspilled beans I’m already carrying would astonish you.”

“I imagine it would. What about Hawkeye? How is he?”

“Convinced he’s going to hang.”

“For such a brilliant man, Hawkeye can be awfully stupid. He’ll need some kind of punishment, nothing that will get in the way of surgery—I’m thinking I’d like to remand him to your care. He sees you every day as long as you’re here. Get his head screwed on straight before the shit hits the fan.”

“He’d likely see me every day anyway. I’m staying in the Swamp.”

“You know what I meant. Any assignments you want to give him can go under extra duty. But I want him able to stand at the table—we’re getting another run of heavy casualties.”

“Let’s just hope it holds off until tomorrow.”

Potter steered him through the door and past Radar. He plucked the sleeping clerk’s glasses off his face, folded them, and rested them near his hand. “I have it on good authority they’ll be arriving sometime between 0100 and 0500 hours.” He chucked his chin at Radar on his way out the door. 

Once they were outside, he said, “in the past week that boy’s gone from a few seconds warning about incoming choppers to apologizing that he can’t give me a window narrower than four hours for the next batch of wounded--who aren’t even wounded yet.”

Sidney held him up with a hand to his elbow. “So you think there’s something to what he said about Tokyo and New York City?”

“Count on it.”

Sidney stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked with Potter toward the supply shed. “You know I have people there.”

“I assumed so or Radar wouldn’t have picked up on it.” 

“That’s a lot—” he broke off to blink into the afternoon sun. He huffed out a breath and continued at the same slow pace as before, kicking idly at a couple of clods as he went. He firmed up his shoulders and nodded. “That seems like a lot for someone Radar’s age to shoulder.”

“For anybody to shoulder,” Potter muttered, pointedly. They reached the supply shed. Potter rapped sharply on the door.

“Who is it?” Klinger said.

“Colonel Potter and Dr. Freedman,” Potter said, a bit more formally than he might ordinarily have. He schooled his face to gravity. It didn’t take much schooling.

“We’re still here,” Klinger said.

He entered and stood just inside the door. Sidney followed to stand by his side, both of them approximating parade rest. “Wait outside, Corporal,” he said, his tone sounding weary even to him.

Klinger’s mouth opened on what was probably a joke, but he caught the looks on their faces, closed his mouth on his words, and when he opened it again it was just to say, “Yes, sir.” He pushed the door closed behind him but didn’t latch it. Potter could all but guarantee his ear was pressed to the door.

“Major Burns,” Potter barked.

Burns leaped to his feet. “I demand you—”

“Major, you are out of turn. You struck a superior officer, a patient at this hospital, exacerbating his injuries and jeopardizing critical military intelligence. You are in no position to demand anything.”

“Sir, I—”

“Shut up, Frank!” Potter would pace if he felt he could turn his back on the man. “If the camp weren’t locked down I’d have you court-martialed. And if you were very lucky, you might end up sitting out the rest of this war in Leavenworth. Unfortunately for me, I can’t call a court-martial for several weeks, by which time we might well be under enemy occupation. You leave me with very few options, Major.”

Frank paled as he considered the implications. “Whatever you do to me you have to do to Pierce!” he said.

Potter smiled thinly. “I have witnesses who say he was acting to defend the patient.”

“They’re lying, Colonel! It was revenge, plain and simple. He’s had it in for me since day one! Him and everybody else!”

Sidney shifted beside him. “Paranoid thinking, Colonel.”

Burns spluttered, “I’m not paranoid. You really are all out to get me. Now see here, Colonel, if you don’t remand Captain Pierce for court-martial I will personally take my case up the chain of command, see if I don’t!”

“No, you see here, Major!” Potter said, his choler rising. He could feel it reddening his cheeks and all the way to the tips of his ears. “I have had it up to here with your laziness, your sloppy technique, your entitled whining and your intolerable bigotry. For the next two weeks you will be confined to private quarters when you are not on duty. And you will be performing the duties of an orderly, seeing as the powers that be have seen fit to provide me with three extra doctors and short me orderlies!”

“General Smith will hear of this!”

“I’m sure he will. You are welcome to take your complaints up the chain of command in two weeks, provided there’s still a chain of command to take them to. Good day!” He turned on his heel and strode out of the supply shed. “Klinger!”

“Yes sir, I’m right here, sir!” The corporal worked one finger in his ear, wincing.

“Rustle up some privates and set up a one-man tent right outside surgical. Don’t block any entrances.”

“Right away, Colonel!” Klinger said and marched off, his skirts swirling around his calves.

Potter shook his head at himself, took off his glasses, and wiped them with his handkerchief. “That could have gone better.”

Sidney shrugged liquidly. “I doubt that, under the circumstances. Should Hawkeye be out of the Swamp?”

Potter turned to see the bright splotch of Hawkeye’s bathrobe just outside the VIP tent. He replaced his glasses. “He’s all right. Bones and Spock will keep the two of them in line if he’s not.”

*

Hawkeye waited for a response to his knock. Spock came to the door, face unreadable as usual. “Captain Pierce,” he said.

“Can I come in? I want to apologize. For my behavior in the mess.”

“Let him in, Spock,” Kirk called from inside.

“Are you certain, Captain?”

There was a longish pause. “Yes, Spock, I’m fine. Come in, Hawkeye.”

The door was opened for him and he entered. Kirk lay propped on the bed at a thirty-degree angle, a pile of papers on a chair beside him. When Hawkeye made for the chair, Bones scooped up the papers and passed them on to Spock. “Hey,” Hawkeye said.

“Sorry I hit you, Hawkeye,” Kirk said first. “I’m not quite myself yet.”

“I’d like to say I’m not either, but that crap I pulled in the mess was all me. I lost a patient, I got a little crazy. The food here, it’s awful, it stinks, and I just get fed up. Doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have done it.”

Kirk put on a smile. “Like I said, it’s okay. Sometimes my past just catches up with me.”

Hawkeye ran fingers through his own hair. “Yeah.”

“Hey, Spock, how about you and I get back to work.” Bones stood up and headed for the door. “Now would be good.”

“Are you sure that is wise, Doctor?”

“They’ll be fine. Come on.”

Spock hesitated at the door for a few seconds before following Bones out and closing it behind him. 

Hawkeye hunched a little smaller in the folding chair. He had been hoping to have the insulation of an audience to keep them both from having to say too much. “BJ told me you don’t like to waste food. I should have remembered.”

“Did he say why?”

“Bones didn’t tell him. I’m assuming it's pretty bad or he’d say.”

“You could say that.” Kirk’s gaze tracked away from Hawkeye’s face to stare into middle distance.

“Bad food can kill you dead as a bullet,” Hawkeye said, though whether he was trying to justify himself or just trying to explain his fear he wasn’t quite sure.

Kirk nodded. “So can not having any.” His voice grew harsh and raspy. Hawkeye wanted to listen to his lungs, just to be sure it was emotion and not some new injury. 

Hawkeye swallowed. “My dad was—is—a doctor in Maine. After my mom died, I sometimes went with him on house calls. One Sunday afternoon he was sent to check on a family that had been missed at church. When we got there, he told me to stay in the car while he went inside. I waited for a long time, too long. I was a curious kid.” He laced and unlaced his fingers in front of him. “I got out of the car to peek in the window. Dad was bent over someone lying on the couch. Somebody else was lying on the floor. I couldn’t see clearly through the curtains. I must have made a noise, because my dad looked up, saw me, and waved me back to the car.”

Kirk nodded, his mouth pressed into a grim line. Hawkeye went on. “I went back to the car. I sat there long enough for the sun to get lower in the sky, but the look on my dad’s face when he shooed me back to the car—I knew I shouldn’t get back out to check again. He came out of the house with a baby in his arms, a few months old. He gave me the baby, got into the driver’s seat, and drove across town without saying a word while the baby slept in my arms.” He swallowed. 

Kirk interrupted in a whisper. “What was it?”

“Botulism. From home canned potato stew. It took everyone but the baby. We didn’t eat anything canned after that. I couldn’t even look at canned food without breaking into a sweat.”

Kirk lay back on the pillows. “I lived on a colony world for a few years as a kid. There was a situation. With the food supply.”

“A situation?”

“Crop failure. We were all hungry, of course, but since it was everyone, it wasn’t so bad.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He hadn’t gone hungry as a kid, doctors often being paid in produce and dry goods when money was scarce, but he knew plenty of kids at school who had.

“About a month after the rationing started, the governor decided to divide the colony in half. Half worth feeding, the other half not. He called the half he planned to--sacrifice--to the town hall. For ration distribution and an announcement. I was hanging out under the stage with some other kids when the shooting started. You know how kids are, we’d rather do anything than listen to boring adults give a speech.” He swallowed. “It’s the smell I remember, after. Nothing in the world like it.”

Hawkeye found himself at a loss for anything to say. It wasn’t the first story of its kind he’d heard. Just six, seven years ago, it had been a story writ larger by orders of magnitude. “I understand if you can’t forgive me.”

“You know something Bones told me once? Pain is not a contest. My pain doesn’t negate yours.”

“I don’t know.” He had to stand. He prowled the tiny floor space of the VIP tent. “This—world-ending crisis—this is normal for you, isn’t it?” He squeezed his head between his fists and groaned. “How do you contain it all?”

“I don’t. Not always. Waiting for a chance to act is the hardest. I promise I’d be pacing the room too if I could stand for that long.” The smile he offered Hawkeye was genuine this time. “Spock and Radar will reach my ship. I have absolute confidence in them.”

“And if the bureaucrats on that other Earth decide to write us all off?”

Kirk lay back against the pillows. “I’d like to tell you that won’t happen, but most of the Admiralty don’t have enough sense to fill a shot glass.” 

“Military intelligence,” Hawkeye snorted.

“Some days it seems like it. Spock is sending a coded signal to the Enterprise along with the official distress call. Scotty will get my ship to me, orders or no orders.”

And where will that leave us, once the three of you are rescued, Hawkeye wondered. He was sure the gratitude of three midlevel officers in control of one ship couldn’t save two and a half billion people from an alien empire. “Well, that’s great. That’s great for you.” He stood up a little too quickly. The chair tipped backward and hit the floor with a sharp crack that made both of them jump.

“I won’t let Earth fall.”

“I can believe you and your friends wouldn’t let your Earth fall to an enemy. But once you’ve gotten away, will you care so much about mine?”


	4. In which the rug gets pulled out from under Sidney

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Potter informs Hawkeye of the consequences of his actions, and Sidney catches up with Radar.

Hawkeye emerged from the VIP tent, his faded red bathrobe flapping around his calves. Sidney stretched his steps to meet him before he could disappear into the Swamp. “You and I need to have a talk with the Colonel,” he said, hooking the taller man’s arm so he swung around on his slippers.

Hawkeye planted his feet and folded his arms across his chest, pulling Sidney’s hand along as he did. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stew in my own juices for a while. Postpone the inevitable.”

“It’s not all the same to me, Hawkeye. And I outrank you, so you’re coming with me.” He made his tone deliberately light, but his grip firm enough that Hawkeye would have to pull away with intent or follow.

Hawkeye waggled his eyebrows unconvincingly. “And we all know how much I respect rank.”

“Indeed we do.” He urged Hawkeye along. The bigger man humored him enough to walk at his side. Sidney opened the door to Potter’s office and directed Hawkeye inside. 

Radar was back at the radio, listening intently with one hand on his headphones and the other poised over the button on a spinning reel to reel. He held up a hand to both of them and Hawkeye paused, mouth snapping shut on his next retort, fingers miming a key turning at his lips. Sidney stopped still for the space of several breaths until Radar’s finger jabbed the button on the reel to reel. He pulled off the headphones and stood. “I’ll tell the Colonel you’re here.”

“Thank you, Radar,” Sidney said. Beside him, Hawkeye examined the tie on his dressing gown. 

The clerk poked his head in the swinging door that led to Potter’s office. “Major Freedman and Captain Pierce here to see you, Sir.” 

There was a brief pause, then Potter said, “I need to have a private discussion with those two. Think you could make yourself scarce?”

“Yes, sir.” Radar held the door open for the two of them, then ducked out.

Potter sat behind his desk, wire rims balanced on the end of his nose. He gestured toward the closing door with his chin. “Never thought I’d miss not getting a word in edgewise.” Hawkeye moved to take a seat. “At ease, Captain. I have to make this official.”

Hawkeye stiffened beside Sidney. Sidney moved a little to the side, to allow Potter to say his piece.

Potter plucked a packet of paper from his desk, flipped through it, and pushed it across the table. “Circumstances permit me to level administrative punishment in the event of a failure of discipline.” Hawkeye’s shoulders sagged in evident relief at the words “administrative punishment.” He had to know that Potter was unlikely to make the unilateral decision to carry out a capital sentence without the backing of a court-martial.

Potter continued. “I am satisfied, as regards the charges leveled by Major Burns, that your actions were an attempt to defend Captain Kirk. However, your behavior in the mess tent prior to the altercation was inexcusable.” He pushed back his chair and walked around the desk to perch on its edge. “You know as well as I do how important it is we remain on good terms with those men from the future—or whenever it is they’re from. I’m docking your pay for the next two weeks, though who knows if any of us will ever get paid again. And I’m ordering you to see Dr. Freedman for a minimum of a half an hour every day.”

Hawkeye’s mouth quirked wryly. “Half an hour a day with Sidney going to cure my sense of impending doom?”

“If it would I’d be seeing him for a half an hour a day myself.” He picked up a pen to twirl in his fingers as though it were a cigar. “Find something you can stomach to eat and try to catch a little sleep before the next batch of wounded. Dismissed. Both of you.” Sidney caught Potter’s eye for a moment in an unspoken offer. Potter waved him off. 

There would be plenty of time to see how Potter was holding up later. Sidney wasn’t going anywhere, after all. He walked with Hawkeye toward the mess tent. “You all right?”

“If you’re asking if I’m about to start a food fight, the answer’s no, I can behave myself. I might even eat whatever’s masquerading as food around here. Care to join me?”

“Later. I have one other patient to see.” And he needed to be alone for a while. He could feel the weight of too many revelations in short order on his mind, and he knew he’d be useless to anyone if he let it all fester. Heal thyself, he thought.

Sidney strolled around the perimeter of the camp, hands tucked with self-conscious deliberation deep into his pockets. He turned a slow circle in place, taking in the steel gray clouds on the horizon contrasting with the bright blue sky overhead. It was not often that he found himself unable to put his own thoughts in order—as a psychotherapist, he’d been through enough therapy himself while learning the craft that analyzing his own reactions had become second nature—but today was more than enough to put him over the edge.

If what Potter had told him was true, if the blue sky hid menacing aliens due to invade and destroy much of what he held dear in mere weeks, what should he do? He had a wife and son in Brooklyn, not to mention his parents, his colleagues, and his neighbors. War is a dangerous business. He’d always known that each call might be the last time he spoke to them, but he’d never despaired of their safety the way he did now. 

He hadn’t measured his steps. Without consciously willing it, he found himself standing beside Sophie’s makeshift stall. “What do you think of all this?” he asked her. She bent her head to take another mouthful of hay and chewed lazily. He ran one hand down her sleek neck and flank, taking comfort in her animal solidity. Corporal O’Reilly had always been an imaginative boy. Perhaps he had become frightened and said some things that the travelers had taken too seriously. But no, it wasn’t fair for him to rest his incredulity on Radar’s shoulders alone. It was the situation, from the broken sky to the alien castaways, to rumors and premonitions of the end of everything Sidney held dear. It was more than his mind could hold at one time.

A soft squeak and scrape around the corner turned his head. “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Freedman. I’m just, um, making sure my animals have clean cages and food before it gets busy.”

“Radar,” he acknowledged, seeing the jeep capped head moving behind the row of cages near Sophie’s stall. “About when are we expecting guests then?”

“Before dawn. Oh four hundred, about. Storms rolling in after midnight. I’ll get you some rain gear from Supply.” Sidney heard the opening and closing of cages and the rumple of paper. Radar murmured and clicked his tongue at each of them in turn.

Sidney waited, quiet, until the rustling stopped. He walked around until he could see Radar properly then, keeping his movements slow so as not to spook either boy or animals. The clerk had a raccoon in his arms and a skunk on his shoulder with its tail curled around the underside of his neck like a stole. There were tears in his eyes. Sidney leaned against the wall as though he had nothing to do until the end of time. Radar glanced up at him for a fraction of a second, nodded slightly to acknowledge he’d been seen, but sat stroking the raccoon without speaking for another few minutes, until it chittered at him and turned in his lap, restless. He returned it and the skunk to their cages. “He’s blind, you know,” he said.

“Who?”

“Shadow. My raccoon. I’m letting the rest of them go the next time there’s a break in the storms. I think they’ll be all right. I mean they’ve got a better chance out there than here.” He stroked the raccoon through the open cage door.

“Why’s that, do you think?”

Radar shut down visibly, curling into himself like one of his frightened pets. “You’d probly think I’m crazy.”

“Radar, you’re one of the sanest people I know. Sit down a minute.” Radar latched the raccoon’s cage and sat. Sidney pulled up a crate to settle in beside him. “Your trouble is you worry too much.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Radar protested but changed his mind about continuing. He took off his tear smeared glasses to clean them ineffectively with his shirt-tail.

Sidney leaned forward onto his elbows. “I’m not saying I doubt you. Though I’m not sure what all you’ve gotten yourself into. Seems like an awful lot for one corporal to shoulder.”

“I’m not the only person working extra hard around here.”

“No, you’re not.” He scratched his nose to give himself a moment to think. “Oh four hundred. You sure about that?”

Radar shrugged. “Between oh four hundred and oh five hundred.” He fiddled with his cuffs. “I’m sorry. About New York.”

“Radar.” Sidney caught his attention with a change in tone. “You don’t really know something’s going to happen to New York.”

“Wish I didn’t. I told you before, ‘cept you didn’t believe me then either, sometimes I know stuff before it happens. There’s going to be atom bombs, or something like them. New York. Tokyo. San Francisco. I think maybe Washington.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “I don’t know where else. And these aliens with wrinkled heads are coming here, to this camp, with laser weapons like in comic books. They’ll burn it all down and if we don’t leave, we’ll all be dead, or worse, and the animals too.”

Sidney had known, of course, that Radar believed himself to be a little bit psychic in some way or another, but he’d written it off as a coping mechanism, like Hawkeye’s drinking or Klinger’s couture. “But how do you know?”

Radar shrugged. “Same as I always have. It’s like remembering, only backward.”

“Remembering backward.”

“Spock’s been helping me figure out when and where and how likely something is to happen. Though wearing a different scarf every hour on watch was Klinger’s idea.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“Well, it’s dark all night, and I couldn’t figure out when the wounded were coming except it was after the rain starts and before the sky gets lighter. So Klinger said he’d wear a different colored scarf every hour tonight—he’s got watch—and he was, will be I mean, wearing a yellow one. Which means between four and five in the morning.”

Sidney found himself momentarily speechless. That was either one of the craziest things he’d ever heard or one of the cleverest. “So you and Klinger worked out a way to make your—visions—more specific?”

Radar shrugged. “Yeah, why not?”

Sidney tried to trace the convoluted implications of the future being influenced by the mere intention to do something. It made his head hurt. He reminded himself to attend to the task at hand. “You mentioned Commander Spock’s been helping you. He sent me to talk to you. He’s concerned that you’re working yourself too hard.”

“He said so?”

“They all did. And Colonel Potter.”

Radar clenched his fists. “Them aliens, the ones with the wrinkled heads, they take over whole planets and make the people that live on them slaves. They’re as bad as the Nazis were and we got just one shot to save the world from that. We gotta get that transmitter running in the next couple of days or it’s all over!”

“How close are you?”

Radar shrugged. “Close enough to maybe get a message out in time.” He fidgeted in his seat. “Dr. Freedman?”

“Yes, Radar?”

“You got anybody particular you want me to call? I can make one call. Just one, when I send out the decoded transmissions for the day.”

Sidney thought. He could tell his wife and son to head upstate at least. Maybe a few of the neighbors would listen. He knew already that people were leaving the cities out of fear that the Russians would start something. He could encourage them to go without revealing any especially classified specifics. Was it fair to give his family a chance at safety that so few others would get? The real question was whether he would be able to live with himself if he denied them that chance. “You won’t get in trouble?”

“I’m too useful right now to get in real trouble, and after—well, if there’s an after it won’t matter so much I bet.”

“If?”

“Well. I can’t see past a couple of weeks from now. It’s all smoke and broken lines.” Radar was wringing wrinkles into the hem of his jacket. “I think it might mean that I’m not going to be around after.” His face crumpled at the admission, and he took a deep shuddering breath before dissolving into sobs. “I’m sorry sir, I know I shouldn’t,” he said. Sidney slipped off his chair to offer some physical comfort, but before he could wrap his arms around the boy, Radar waved him away with the hand that wasn’t covering his eyes.

Sidney squatted next to Radar to wait, close enough to reach for him if he changed his mind about being held.

“It’s not fair,” Radar said in a choked voice, “I had things I wanted to do. I’ve never even—I haven’t done anything. I don’t want to die now. What if I never know whether Ma and Uncle Ed get through all right?” The animals chittered and squeaked in their cages, though whether in distress or sympathy Sidney didn’t know. “I know, I’m being selfish, guys my age die here every day. In pain. Without anybody who knows them—” He wrapped his arms across his stomach and rocked, still crying. He waved an arm in the direction of Shadow’s cage. “Who’s going to want to take care of a blind raccoon?”

“I know,” Sidney said.

“You don’t! You don’t know anything!” Radar balled his hands into fists and pounded them into his thighs, faster and faster until Sidney caught them in his own hands. 

He wasn’t sure if it was the revelations of the day, worry for himself and his own family, or anger that the world had conspired to break the innocent kid in front of him. Radar ought to be home taking care of his animals on a farm with his family, not holding together a mobile hospital in a war zone out of sheer force of will. He felt the brittle control he had over his own terror and grief shatter. 

He pulled Radar into a rough embrace, squeezing him tight and pulling his head down into the crook of his shoulder, half imagining he was holding his own little son. Radar flinched back, but in a moment wrapped his own arms around Sidney, still sobbing. “I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry,” Radar said.

“Shh, shhh, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

There was a tap, scuff, tap, scuff behind them and Sidney let Radar go to see Spock propped on his crutches near the stack of cages. “Are you unwell, Radar?”

Radar stood up quickly and straightened his uniform, looking embarrassed to be caught doing something as unmanly as crying. “I was just—” He wiped his face on his sleeve and straightened his glasses, then clasped his hands formally behind his back. “There are new intercepts on the reel to reel. I finished decoding them, but I need them checked before I pass them on to the colonel.”

“Thank you, Radar.” The alien regarded the animals deliberately. “How are your companions?”

“Well enough, sir. Nervous.” Radar snatched his clipboard off the top of the cages. “I gotta go.” He turned sideways to slip past Spock and Sidney.

“Radar, wait a moment,” Spock said.

“Yes, sir?”

“It is not necessary for you to suppress emotional expression for my sake. Your humanity is an asset, not a handicap.”

Radar ducked his head and fiddled with his cap. “I—gotta go.” He slid past the two of them and hurried back toward his office. Sidney watched him go, as did Spock.

Sidney hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. The alien shifted on his crutches. “What’s your interest in Corporal O’Reilly?” Sidney said.

“Radar has been essential to the construction of communications devices that may bring the Federation to all our aid.”

Sidney waited. There was always more to the story than the first answer to a question. He flicked his fingers in the alien's general direction to encourage him to elaborate. 

Spock responded with a single raised eyebrow. “His gifts cause him suffering. I have been endeavoring to assist, to the extent that I can.” He pivoted on his crutches. “In so doing, I find I have grown somewhat fond.”

“So, you think he’s for real?”

“Of that I am quite certain.”

Of course you are, Sidney thought. How many paradigms was he going to have to shift today? “He’s convinced he’s going to die, you know.”

Spock nodded. “I am aware. From what I have observed, I believe that the possibilities are too numerous and contingent to draw conclusions with any certainty. It is also possible that none of us survives.”

How could he sound so calm in the face of knowledge like that? “I hope you’re wrong.”

“As do I, Doctor.” He leaned back onto his crutches. “The transmitter is nearly complete. If all goes well, we should have a message out in the next two days, sufficient time for Starfleet to send at least one ship to investigate.” He indicated the darkening horizon with a nod. “The weather is a concern. Storms will interfere with the signal, and high winds or lightning could damage the device itself once it is in place.”

“It’s that time of year, I’m afraid.” The wind picked up, just enough to tug his coat forward across his body. Sheet lightning, too far away to hear, licked the bottoms of the not-so-distant clouds. “We both have work to do. I won’t keep you any longer.”

Commander Spock acknowledged the dismissal with a nod and swung away on his crutches. Sidney turned back toward Radar’s office, already composing a message to his wife in his head.


	5. In which Radar takes a leap of faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sidney settles in, Radar obtains actionable intelligence, and the storms, and wounded, arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not the plan. Spock and Radar came to me with the alternate plan and insisted upon following through, despite my protests. AKA you knew we were gonna end up back in that cornfield one of these days.

Sidney sipped at his share of the Swamp gin. Hawkeye sprawled on his cot, while BJ perched beside him, ritually washing his socks. Loosened by alcohol, his tongue slipped unwisely. “My wife and son won’t leave the city.”

“What do you mean?” BJ said.

“She doesn’t like to travel. She told me that if things got rough, she’d rather be somewhere she knows, with people she knows. There was nothing I could say.”

Hawkeye drained his glass. “Thought you were supposed be keeping me from going nuts, not helping me along.”

“Nope.” Sidney lay back on his own cot and laced his fingers behind his head. He worked his boots off his feet with his toes and kicked them to the floor. “I’m supposed to keep you from going sane. It’s the world that’s gone nuts.”

BJ hung the last of his socks on the line and lay down next to Hawkeye. Despite the removal of Frank from the Swamp, the two hadn’t pushed their cots apart. “The two of us have to be up at 0330, so if you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”

Hawkeye stirred long enough to put out the lights. Sidney stared upward, unable to sleep. He’d had an enlightening discussion concerning Sigmund Freud with Bones earlier, and it had gotten him thinking, not just about fallen idols but about people more generally, the roles they played, the traits they grew into. The collective unconscious, an idea he’d considered far too spiritual for his own tastes turning out to be perhaps not entirely metaphor, at least according to the doctor. He felt the need to compose a letter, in his mind only perhaps, given he didn’t want to disturb the other men’s sleep. “Dear Carl,” he thought, contemplating the new name, “I find myself with my foundations shaken, and thought you ought to find our current predicament of interest…”

*

Wind smacked the heavy tarps against the tent walls hard enough to make Radar jump. So far, only a fine mist made it through screens and tarps to spray Spock and him while they tied oilcloth around the more delicate parts of the nearly completed transmitter. All that remained was to tow the jeep chassis to the ridge, assemble the base, the tower, and the encoding computer, a marvel of improvised engineering Radar had mostly assembled by hand, following Spock’s careful drawings and direction.

“I could stay here and keep an eye on it,” Radar said, noticing the faint vertical line between Spock’s eyes that meant he was worried.

Spock pivoted toward a chair, sat, and leaned his crutches against his worktable. “Unnecessary. You require rest.” He loaded tools off the table and into a crate. “Unless you have reason to believe something might befall the transmitter in our absence.”

“I don’t know—I mean, I haven’t thought about it.” He sat down on the other chair, smiled self-consciously, and rested his hands deliberately on his knees. He fixed his attention on the transmitter, trying to chase its thread forward and finding he still couldn’t trace inanimate objects, so he turned to Spock instead, looking for Spock’s actions with the transmitter, and could find no likely future in which it was damaged inside their workspace. He also could find no future in which the transmitter didn’t stay inside and unused for the next several days. The rain seemed determined to hang on for the better part of a week. “It’s fine here,” he said. “But by the time the rain lets up it may be too late for it to do any good.”

“We will make the attempt regardless,” Spock assured him. “The rainfall has slowed slightly. Now would be a fortuitous time to return to our respective quarters.” 

Radar walked with Spock to the door of the VIP tent and held it for him while he went inside. “You want anything from the mess tent?” he asked, seeing the captain sitting up in bed with radio transcripts arranged around him like square white petals.

The “No, we’re fine” was already forming on Kirk’s lips when he looked in the direction of Spock, standing just in front of Radar, and smiled more broadly. Instead, he said, “If there’s a sandwich or something around I’d be grateful. I’d ask for coffee, but Bones would have my head.”

“Mr. Spock, sir? I know you haven’t eaten all day.”

“I would appreciate whatever you can find.”

Radar suspected the both of them of some ulterior motive—another phrase he’d picked up from Henry—but he touched his cap in lieu of saluting and closed the door behind him. There wasn’t much left in the mess tent—they’d closed up for the evening, and with only a couple of patients, there was no need to hold food over for surgeons grabbing meals on short breaks at odd hours. He let himself into the small prep room in the back of the tent and made a couple of sandwiches, one meatloaf, the other peanut butter and jelly, wrapped them carefully against the rain, and started back to the VIP tent.

An impulse made him stop and change direction in the middle of the yard. He slipped into his room, crouched to reach under his bed underneath his comic books, and pulled out a round tin embossed with poinsettias. He tucked it under his coat for safekeeping and jogged back through the rain, which had grown heavy enough to soak his hat and drip down over his glasses. Spock opened the door as he reached it.

“I managed to find stuff for sandwiches,” he said, first shaking the water off his coat in the doorway, then setting the packages on the table along with the tin. Once his coat was hanging on a hook by the door, he gave Kirk one, saying, “It’s meatloaf, but it’s decent.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Kirk said, his smile genuine.

Radar sat at the table to pry open the tin with his fingernails. “Did you tell him about the rain, Mr. Spock?”

“I have,” Spock said. “It would be wise to make another attempt to obtain actionable intelligence this evening.”

“Yes, sir,” Radar acknowledged, hating the tremor in his voice. With the alien’s patient assistance, he’d gotten better over the past week at picking apart the threads of possible futures, but only within the short time they had until the invasion. Every attempt so far they’d made to walk into the cloud of smoke and terror now less than two weeks ahead of them had left Radar shaking and exhausted, with little useful information to show for the effort.

The cookie tin popped open with a faint metallic ring. Waxed paper crinkled around the precious contents. Radar took out six cookies, three flat, delicately pink-tinted flowers, and three more substantial oatmeal cookies, studded with walnuts. “These came from my Ma. I don’t want to eat them by myself.” He closed the tin on the remainder, hoping to catch Klinger later. 

Spock sniffed a cookie delicately. “Do they contain chocolate?”

“Naw, chocolate’s expensive. Sorry.”

“Chocolate has unfortunate effects on my physiology.”

“Gets him high as a kite,” Kirk supplied by way of explanation.

Radar nibbled his cookies to make them last, each bite taking him back to the smells of the kitchen at home. The residue of woodsmoke in the walls and the cream colored lace curtains tatted by his grandmother. Onions strung up in the pantry. The sharp scent of vinegar his mother used to clean. “Your mother is quite a cook,” Kirk said.

“She always could make simple stuff seem special. Even when there wasn’t a lot to go around.” The sadness he felt then, suddenly, wasn’t all his own, and he turned to look at Kirk.

“It’s nothing,” the captain said.

“I wish I could see them again.”

“You will,” Kirk insisted, as though his conviction would make it be true.

The rain washed over the roof of the VIP tent in sheets. Radar checked each of the windows, making sure each was sealed as tightly as the materials would allow. The narrow sills and furniture near the windows were still dampened with spray. “Are you willing to work here, Corporal? I would prefer not to leave these quarters until absolutely necessary.”

“There’s a spare cot under my bed,” Jim said. “It’s supposed to be for Bones, in case he gets paranoid about my health, but you’re welcome to it for the night.”

Radar pulled back the edge of one of the window covers to look outside and was rewarded with a face full of rain for his trouble. “I’ll have to get back to the radio.”

“Very well. Attempt to reach the third stage of meditation on your own. I will join with you when you have done so.”

“Can’t we just—” Radar started to protest, but fell silent at Spock’s raised eyebrow.

“After this crisis has passed, you and I are unlikely to be assigned to duty near each other. I would prefer to leave you with as much skill as possible.”

“If either of us is alive.”

“Indeed. Please begin.”

Unlike Kirk, Spock never contradicted Radar’s pessimism even when Radar wanted him to. Radar pulled the cot out from under Kirk’s bed, pulled a set of sheets from the cabinet and made it up, stalling. He tugged off his shoes. Spock’s disapproving gaze led him to collect them from where they’d fallen and place them neatly beside the cot. He wriggled into a crosslegged position, though he had to hold onto his ankles to keep them from slipping away from him. Kirk was too close, bleeding gold down his back even though he was trying to pay attention to his paperwork. Spock had seated himself on his own bunk, the sunset colors of his aura reflecting his already quieting mind. 

Radar fidgeted. “It’s not easy to meditate with you guys watching me.”

“No, it is not. Begin by finding your breath.”

Radar closed his eyes again and huffed out a breath that sounded as annoyed as he felt. The cot creaked under him and he wanted to move. His pants were damp. His collar was scratchy. He hoped he didn’t have crumbs around his mouth and before he could stop it, his hand reached up to wipe them away. He started over. Cold air on his nose. His shirt moving against his chest as he breathed. He noticed each sensation and dismissed it, or pretended to. Really they kept popping up like loose nails. He hammered one down and found another and how long was he taking anyway? Too long.

He tried imagining his workspace. The field of young corn, the shed beside, threads stretching away across the field. The night sky full of stars. He could imagine one part, stars above, field ahead, threads stretching away, clear as though he were there, but the rest slipped away. He was standing at the edge of the cornfield, looking out toward the cloud of flame shot smoke, closer now than last time, always a little closer than the time before. He touched the threads nearest him. Spock. Hawkeye. Colonel Potter. He imagined his Ma’s voice, caught her thread—fainter because she was farther away, or because it had been longer since he’d seen her, he didn’t know which. It disappeared into the dark like all the rest.

Radar made himself walk forward. There was a small sound, a creak like someone shifting on one of the cots, and he lost his concentration. He imagined the cornfield again, though it was even less distinct than before. He was never going to be any good at this. How did the ground feel underfoot in the spring again? He took a couple of steps forward, imagining the soft clods giving beneath his feet, until he was standing directly in front of the future he couldn’t see. Didn’t want to see. 

There was a light pressure, a sort of drawing outward and Radar focused toward it. The scene around him crystallized, so sharp he could feel the heat, see the faint whirling orange sparks in front of him and smell the loamy earth beneath his feet. He looked to his left. Spock stood beside him in black and crisp blue. Radar picked up the clearest thread: His own. 

He cast forward into his own future. There was the bug out, and after, a muddled mix of hiding in the jungle, walking single file guarded by North Koreans on either side, flashes of unfamiliar, angular architecture, rooms lit red and marked with unfamiliar symbols, none of it certain. He shied away from glimpses of his own deaths, four of them, all sudden and violent, all different. He still couldn’t push forward, past the alternate hells of capture by North Koreans or monstrous aliens. He couldn’t tell if there was any future in which he might survive. _I’m sorry, I still can’t see._

_You are afraid to look._

_Same difference._

Spock hesitated, uncomfortable. _I believe we must attempt a deeper rapport._

_Is that bad?_

_It is difficult. We will perceive and act as one. You may find the loss of autonomy frightening._

_You do,_ Radar thought before he could stop himself.

_Indeed._

_What do I do?_

Spock said nothing. They contemplated the darkness before them. _I am considering an applicable metaphor._

Whatever that meant.

Spock turned his palm upward. _When you are ready, take my hand, and step into the smoke._

He knew he was probably going to be stepping smack into the absolute knowledge of his own death. It was not the kind of thing he imagined he’d ever be ready for. How had uncle Ernest felt in those last weeks of his life, after he’d taken a room in town to be close to the undertaker? Had he really moved for the convenience of all concerned, or had that just been a cover for wanting to be closer to company in his final days? 

Radar reached out, gripped Spock’s hand firmly, and stepped forward into the dark. 

The ground fell away beneath him, and as it did the workspace he had struggled to build evaporated, leaving him suspended in waves of light and noise, compelled to think words he didn’t understand. He knew he needed to cooperate, to try to understand what was happening to him—to them—and help it along, but he struggled, on the edge of panic until even his ability to be afraid was pressed flat. _You are safe. Be still. I am here._

The words did little to reassure him, but they were a target to aim toward. He gave his entire attention to the voice, and the light at its source, and finally the rapport snapped into place and they were able to move on to the task at hand, the part of them that was Radar supported and guided by the part of them who was older and wiser. The threads had multiplied. They were no longer limited to Radar’s bonds. Others stretched in front of them, silver lines leading into the muddied future. They touched them. The Radar part was curious. McCoy and Kirk were the brightest, but there were others, stretched fine and faint with distance. Uhura, a friend with whom Spock shared music, the thread strengthened when he had aided her in recovering her memory a year before. Scotty, loud and rowdy, the thread too faint to trace but still present. A few others. They picked up the brightest thread from Spock’s crew and tried to see forward along it. The impressions were vague. Grief and frustration, a sense of betrayal—then what happened was unclear, except that whatever it was brought her closer to them. Uhura, and presumably with her the ship, would be coming their way. Not yet, but soon.

It was impossible for them to contain their joy. They fell apart abruptly, finding themselves on the imagined porch of Radar’s home. _I believe we have done enough for today._

Radar shrugged as though he were indifferent to the chance to remember his home so clearly. He smiled a little at the chickens pecking at the ground in front of the stairs. _All right._

_You may proceed._

Oh, right. If he were supposed to someday (presuming he lived) do this—stuff—on his own he had to learn how to find his way back without direction. He imagined himself back on the cot, focused on listening for the sound of the rain striking the roof. It took him a minute, but finally he could feel his legs and back protesting the cramped position he’d gotten himself into. Spock collected a crutch and swung back over to his own bed.

“What was that all about?” Kirk asked.

“What was what all about?”

“You whooped.”

Radar poked his glasses back up his nose. “What do you mean I whooped?”

“Like you won a prize or something.”

“Oh. Oh! That was aloud? I’ll let Spock tell you.” He could feel himself grinning.

Spock turned to his captain. “It would appear that the Enterprise will arrive at the Klingon border in seven to ten days.”

“That’s—” Kirk broke off, overcome. “That’s great news. Are you sure?”

“I estimate the likelihood at over seventy percent.”

Kirk chuckled. “That’s short of significant digits, for you.”

“I am unused to perceiving time and probability in the manner Corporal O’Reilly does.”

Radar yawned. He wanted nothing more than to tip sideways and fall asleep where he sat, but his responsibilities for the night were far from over. “I should go,” he said. “Can’t leave the radio for long.”

He struggled into his coat and pulled open the door. He’d be drenched as soon as he stepped outside.

“Radar,” Kirk called after him.

“Yes, Captain Kirk?”

“When you get back there. Call your Mom.”

“That an order, sir?”

Kirk thought a moment. “Yeah.”

*

Klinger’s patrol of the camp consisted of hiding under the eaves of a tent while rain blew sideways up his skirt and plastered the scarf of the hour across his mouth and nose. Every time it let up, he dashed from one tent to the next, hoping to find better shelter from the wind. And every time he found a new spot to shelter, the wind changed and soaked him again. He’d be lucky not to catch his death tonight.

It was a little after four in the morning when he heard the first stirrings in the camp. Potter emerged from his tent, rain slicker flapping around him like bat wings. Klinger splashed toward the mess tent with him. “Coffee,” the Colonel grumbled.

Klinger ducked into the back room for instant coffee, rolls left from last night’s dinner, and a jar of strawberry jam. Once the coffee was started, he sat down with the colonel and their cold breakfast. There would be no choppers in a storm like this. The next person into the mess tent was Radar. “First bus ought to arrive in about twenty minutes. I’ll check on Hawkeye and BJ.” He poured a cup of coffee for himself and one for Potter and sat down beside them. “Colonel Potter, the transmitter will be ready when there’s a break in the weather.”

“And how long until that happens?”

Radar grimaced. “Might be a few days. I got a little more info. Um. The Federation knows we’re here. The Earth I mean. So they’ll be listening when we get the message out. That’s from radio chatter overnight.” He yawned. “We think they’re going to send Enterprise out this way.” He snagged a roll and wolfed it down.

“Radio chatter?” Potter asked.

“Not that part, no.” Radar took another couple of sips of coffee, flipped up his hood, and jogged out into the rain.

Klinger followed him. “Hey, kid.”

Radar slowed, and Klinger hooked his elbow to drag him over to the door of the Swamp. “I take it you tried fortune telling again. What did you really find out?”

“Told you already.” Radar took off his glasses to dry them on his shirt tail. He pulled Klinger into a hug so tight it left him woozy for lack of oxygen. When Radar released him, he was smiling.

“What?”

“I was just, um. I was just checking on Toledo for you. It looks like it’s still there. Will be. You know.” Radar ducked into the swamp to wake the surgeons. Klinger headed back to the mess tent. Small favors, he supposed. If he ever got to go home, he’d have a home to go to.

The first bus splashed up to triage, pulling as close to the door as possible to keep the injured inside from getting wetter than necessary. Klinger jumped up to open the doors, Hawkeye and Radar following close behind. He took the end of a stretcher and flipped up his shawl to shield the young man’s face from the pouring rain.

It was a waste. A waste of energy, of young men, and of precious time.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments build community and I cherish every one.


End file.
